The Venture Codex

Led · Series E · Mar 2021

Launched in 2012, Beam Benefits modernized dental benefits and has expanded into a one-stop ancillary benefits platform offering dental, vision, life, disability, and supplemental health coverage. The company simplifies the $100+ billion ancillary benefits industry through an intuitive online platform, self-service tools, AI-based underwriting, and the Beam Perks program that rewards healthy behaviors. Beam is available in 44 states and has raised over $200 million in funding. The company positions its platform to empower brokers and partner benefits providers with digital tools and underwriting capabilities. The newly committed capital will be used to scale operations and fund growth initiatives. Beam emphasizes continued product and platform development to further modernize employee benefits distribution. Beam Benefits operates a digitally-led platform that simplifies ancillary employee benefits, offering dental, vision, life, disability, and supplemental health coverage. The company emphasizes self-service tools, AI-powered underwriting, and an online experience aimed at modernizing the $100+ billion ancillary benefits industry. Beam Perks provides incentives and rewards to members for healthy behaviors. Beam is available in 44 states across the U.S. Financially, the company has raised over $200 million to date and recently announced a new $40 million financing. Its valuation rose 25% since its Series E raise in early 2021. Beam provides dental coverage to corporate employees and manufactures its own connected toothbrush to track and encourage covered members' brushing. The company also sells software for enrollment and claims and uses its platform to offer additional insurance products to some customers. CEO Alex Frommeyer said Beam runs "sub-70s" loss ratios, meaning it spends less than $0.70 per dollar of premium on claims. Beam reported 600% revenue growth over the last three years and a net revenue retention rate of 100%. The company doubled its member base in both 2019 and 2020 and is focused on continuing rapid growth. Because dental insurance lacks the large catastrophic claims of some other lines, Beam requires a smaller capital reserve and is positioning new funding primarily for growth. Beam Dental sells dental benefit plans that pair algorithmic underwriting with a semiannual subscription service centered on a Bluetooth-enabled sonic toothbrush (the Beam Brush), paste, floss and refill heads. Customers can sync brushing via a companion smartphone app that grades habits from “A” to “D”; top brush scorers earn just over a 10% premium discount. The company operates in 27 states and, as of May 2018, had more than 1,000 small and medium-sized business customers. Beam has partnered with VSP Vision Care to extend vision benefit options to customers. Management plans to use new funding to develop products, grow headcount to over 200 employees, and expand its dental plans to reach over 90% of the U.S. population by year-end. Backers value the addressable dental-insurance market at roughly $78 billion against incumbents like Delta Dental and UnitedHealthcare. Beam Dental offers dental insurance and ancillary benefits via a data-driven platform that consumes and segments business data to incorporate dental hygiene behavior into policy pricing. All plans include a Perks subscription that provides an electric toothbrush, replacement heads, toothpaste, and floss. The company sells primarily to small and medium-sized employers and has added bundled offerings through a partnership with VSP VisionCare to offer vision plans alongside its core dental product. Beam operates in 16 states and plans to expand its technology platform nationwide. The business recently completed a Series C financing to support that expansion. The company was founded in 2012.

Participated · Series B · Jul 2020

K4Connect is a healthtech company that provides enterprise technologies to senior living communities, based in Raleigh, N.C. Its core product is FusionOS, a patented integration platform that connects new and emerging technologies and aggregates health and behavioral data across systems and applications. K4Connect also offers the K4Community Engagement Suite to improve resident engagement and staff workflows. The company says FusionOS helps operators optimize caregiver workflows, lower costs, and improve resident care; its FusionOS and Engagement Suite serve tens of thousands of residents and staff across U.S. senior living communities. K4Connect raised $8.9M in a recent financing, bringing total capital raised to $39M, and plans to use proceeds to drive further adoption in the senior living market and continue advancing its technology. The company is led by CEO F. Scott Moody and announced Mike Weller will join as COO. K4Connect builds a software platform that integrates any number of disparate smart devices, systems and applications into a single responsive system. Its initial K4-branded products, including K4Community, are specifically tailored for seniors and individuals living with disabilities. The company has focused productization around senior living and accessibility use cases. K4Connect is based in Raleigh, North Carolina. Financially, the company has raised an additional $12 million in venture funding during the pandemic period, bringing total capital raised to $35 million since the start of the pandemic. The recent funding includes participation from both existing and new investors tied to the senior-living and real-estate industries. K4Connect offers a FusionOS-based platform (branded K4Community) that bundles voice assistance, pre-provisioned Alexa devices, home automation (thermostats, lights, sensors), video and messaging, resident directories, games and community communications for senior living and care facilities. The company sells its SaaS on a per-resident basis (ranging from a few dollars to tens of dollars per month depending on modules) and includes support and facility productivity tools like event management, surveys and resident/family management. K4Connect serves over 800 continuing care, independent living and assisted living communities and has a 57-person full-time team. The product roadmap has been adjusted during the COVID-19 outbreak (Project COVID 911) to prioritize communications, content delivery, expanded video chat and pre-provisioning to limit in-room installations. The platform also supports livestreamed programming, dining booking tools and resident-to-resident and resident-to-staff video chat. The company is actively developing solutions to expand beyond facility-based communities into affordable housing and seniors living independently. K4Connect is a Raleigh, N.C.-based technology company that creates solutions to serve and empower older adults and individuals living with disabilities. It provides K4Community, a platform designed for residents, staff and operators of senior living communities that integrates smart home, smart wellness and smart living technologies into a single system. The company also develops an underlying Fusion platform/OS to unify those technologies and deliver tools and data for care and hospitality teams. K4Connect intends to use the new funding to further develop K4Community and the Fusion platform, expand its customer base, and accelerate partnerships across consumer and senior living-specific companies. It reports more than 13,000 residents across dozens of senior living communities from Florida to California as customers. The company is led by co-founder and CEO F. Scott Moody and has raised over $22M to date following this round. K4Connect provides K4Community, a responsive platform that integrates smart technologies to foster family and community engagement for senior living residents. K4Community lets residents control their apartments, connect with family and friends through photo sharing and video chats, and stay engaged via event calendars and newsletters. The platform also enables community operators to improve care and hospitality with value-added amenities. K4Connect intends to use the Series A proceeds to accelerate growth of K4Community, its first product. The company is led by co-founder and CEO Scott Moody and is based in Raleigh, N.C.

Led · Series B · Jan 2016

Mercatus offers a cloud-based Energy Investment Lifecycle Management (ILM) platform that automates the full asset investment lifecycle from origination through end-of-life. The platform serves renewable energy developers and asset owners and is used by some of the largest energy companies. Customers collectively leverage the ILM platform to manage over 100 GW of projects across 75 countries using eight advanced energy technologies. The company plans to use the new funding to launch an Asset Management Solution targeted for April and to accelerate its product roadmap toward a digital utility workforce vision. Mercatus also intends to expand further into international markets, particularly South America, Southeast Asia, India, China, and Japan. Mercatus provides cloud-based energy investment management software that helps global energy producers gain insight and increase compliance of their advanced energy portfolios. The platform is used by large energy companies to host over 80GW of power across 75 countries. Supported technologies on the platform include solar, wind, biomass, storage, small hydro, energy efficiency, CHP, and geothermal. Led by CEO Haresh Patel, the company plans to use the new funding to expand operations. Mercatus is positioned to serve large-scale energy portfolios with a compliance and analytics focus. Mercatus, founded in 2009 as SCS Renewables and based in Santa Clara, Calif., provides software solutions for the energy finance industry. Its platform has enabled roughly $250 million in investments and transactions and currently serves more than 40% of the U.S. commercial and utility solar markets. The company recently introduced an energy-industry credit score calculated from eight criteria to create an economic and risk profile for projects. Developers can submit a project and receive a score within 48 hours; scores are visible to both developers and institutional investors. Mercatus aims to increase developers’ understanding of what makes a project fundable and to open the industry to sources of finance beyond angels and venture capitalists. The company raised more than $2 million in its first institutional funding round to support the credit-score rollout.